Widowhood and divorce related to cancer risk in middle-aged women. A nested case-control study among Norwegian women born between 1935 and 1954.

We have examined whether the risk of cancer among divorced or widowed Norwegian women born between 1935 and 1954 was any different from that of married women.

Among a total of approximately 600,000 women, we applied a nested case-control design.

Thus, the study was population-based and included 17,235 incident cases of cancer with 34,460 agematched controls.

For widowed women, there was no overall relation with cancer.

For divorced women, 2 strikingly different associations were apparent.

A reduced risk was seen for cancers of a number of sites, including thyroid, endometrium, colorectum, and breast, as well as malignant melanoma and hematologic malignancies, with statistically signifficant estimates of relative risk ranging from 0.64 to 0.84.